Laura Dimon (demon?) writes at the Atlantic: “Eerie and remarkable.” Those are the words that Robert Bartholomew used to describe this past winter’s outbreak of mass hysteria in Danvers, Massachusetts, a town also…

Does an interior life still exist when all of our motives, quirks, and desires are quantified, quasi-monetary units? Via The New Inquiry, Rob Horning writes: When the mechanistic imperative has been successfully…

Will the jails of the future be filled with those condemned for trollcrimes? ZDNet reports: Online users in China who share false information that is defamatory or affect national interest will face up…

OK, it sounds crazy, but sociologist Robert Bartholomew believes that Facebook and other social media platforms can give rise to Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI), also known as Mass Hysteria. Laura Dimon reports…

The Washington Post on the new propaganda distribution model: Israel is looking to hire university students to post pro-Israel messages on social media networks — without needing to identify themselves as government-linked,…

Via Slashdot Oh, look everyone, a Sarcasm Detector. What a useful invention. This will go great for my iPhone! French tech firm Spotter has apparently devised an analytics platform capable of identifying…

We all know that the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) is monitoring social network and other communications activity, so New York Times music critic Jon Pareles takes issue with Jay-Z’s deal…

On the symbiotic relationship increasingly being revealed between government intelligence agencies and internet corporations, Facecrooks writes: In another twist in what was already a complicated story about Facebook’s involvement in the National…

A terrible formula has taken hold: warfare state + corporate digital power = surveillance state. “National security” agencies and major tech sectors have teamed up to make Big Brother a reality. “Of the…

Via the American Political Science Review, Harvard researchers pinpoint the surprising heart of authoritarian state censorship — anti-government criticism is in fact allowed, but not references to collective action of any sort:…

On the intertwining of social capital and literal capital, the Economist reveals: Facebook data already inform lending decisions at Kreditech, a start-up that makes loans in Germany, Poland and Spain. Applicants are…